Tuesday, November 24, 2015

This CD is filled with 44 minutes of the most beautiful blue grass music I think I have ever heard. Country, Instrumental, and Holiday all come together with instrumentation from Fiddle, String Bass, Hammered Dulcimer, Dobro, Autoharp and Mandolin. It is such a joy to listen to.

My kids and I love to listen to all different kinds of music while we are riding in our van, so when this came up for review from Family Christian, I jumped at the opportunity! I am so thankful I was chosen to do this review. As soon as it came in the mail, we popped it into our cd player and took a drive. We enjoyed this so much! We listened to the whole thing and decided to not listen to anymore until Christmas. We don't like to listen to Christmas music until the month of December. So you can imagine how anxious we are to get to listen to this wonderful cd again in about another week. We can't wait!!!

Here is the list of songs on the cd:

JOY TO THE WORLD

GOOD KING WENCESLAS

IT CAME UPON A MIDNIGHT CLEAR

MARY'S LITTLE BOY CHILD

WHITE CHRISTMAS

WINTER WONDERLAND

JINGLE BELLS

ANGELS WE HAVE HEARD ON HIGH

THE WASSAIL SONG

THE FIRST NOEL

O COME ALL YE FAITHFUL

GOD REST YE MERRY GENTLEMEN

SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN

O CHRISTMAS TREE

Doesn't that sound like an awesome line up of songs to listen to the whole month of December!

The Big Book of Earth & Sky is a 15 foot chart showing the inner and outer atmosphere, published by Masterbooks, a division of New Leaf Publishing Group. The book is recommended for children ages 7-12, however, I have six children that range from 18 years of age all the way down to 2 years of age and we are enjoying doing this study all together.

The chart comes out of the book so you can unfold it to experience all the wonderful information to learn and enjoy!

This book is awesome! Each panel is so colorful and inviting. It has such detailed charts and graphs. We are learning so many things. There are all sorts of facts about oceans, mountains, weather, caves, deep-sea diving, the water cycle, just to name a few.

We highly recommend this book. There is also a Teacher Resource Guide for $5.59 that I recommend using when you are teaching out of this book. It has questions, activities and discussions on what you can do for each study. I downloaded a free preview off of their website that looks like this:

Be sure to Like Master Books Facebook page. Right now they are having a Book Clearance Sale going on. You can save up to 75%.

Disclaimer: I was given this book in exchange for my honest review of this product. No other compensation was given.

Sunday, August 9, 2015

Many years ago my friend shared some wonderful books and DVD's with me and one of the DVD's was of Erin Harrison and her family sharing on homesteading. We have always enjoyed watching them. When I saw her book Living Virtuously: A Wife's Complete Guide To Keeping Her Heart & Home, I knew it was something I would love reading.

This book takes you through Proverbs 31 in the bible among many other scripture. This is absolutely a wonderful book. I have really enjoyed reading it. There is so much to learn from this book. Any woman wanting to bless her family and herself will greatly benefit from the wonderful read. Many a woman would be blessed by this book by learning things taught in this book. It encouraged me to do better and become a better wife and mother.

This book will help you in so many aspects of your life. As a homesteading and homeschooling mom, I understand how hard it is to balance life! This book, for me, was a complete guide to learn to do better and how to do it. On the back of her book it lists.....

In the complete guide you will learn how to....

~Face adversity and find joy in your circumstances.

~Clean and organize your home as a haven of rest.

~Be frugal and plan meals.

~Arrange your life so you have more time.

~Teach your children a good work ethic while embracing motherhood.

~Control words and actions.

~Keep your heart pure.

~Honor your husband.

~Find balance in all areas.

~LIVE VIRTUOUSLY!

It is through her words and quoted scripture that I feel I can do better. When I read this, it made me smile. If you need encouragement and feel like you are failing at keeping your home, this book is for you. Erin will be a true inspiration to you.

Well, our garden this year wasn't to spectacular. I killed everything except the cucumbers. I usually put hay around all the plants and this year, I decided to use some store bought wood mulch. It killed all my plants. I used hay around my cucumbers and they flourished! Here are some things we have been enjoying.

These squash and zucchini were the only nice ones we got this year.

Blueberries, I think we put up about 25 quarts of these beautiful things.

Well, our garden this year wasn't to spectacular. I killed everything except the cucumbers. I usually put hay around all the plants and this year, I decided to use some store bought wood mulch. It killed all my plants. I used hay around my cucumbers and they flourished! Here are some things we have been enjoying.

These squash and zucchini were the only nice ones we got this year.

Blueberries, I think we put up about 25 quarts of these beautiful things.

Thursday, July 9, 2015

Today is all about ART! These are not recent. These were drawn by my second bug when she was 11 years old. She will be 14 this month. I had forgotten about these drawing until she showed them to me the other day. I thought this would be the perfect post for today!

RECIPES!!!!! I love recipes! I don't even know how many cookbooks, homemade and printed I have. I think I snapshot at least two to three a day with my phone.

The first one is a new recipe I tried yesterday. I haven't tried these yet but I am pretty sure they will be a hit.

﻿

PICKLED SWEET GREEN TOMATOES

16 cups sliced green tomatoes

2 cups sliced onions

1/4 cup pickling salt

3 cup brown sugar

1 cup white sugar

4 cups white vinegar

1 cup water

1 Tablespoon mustard seeds

1 Tablespoon whole allspice

1 Tablespoon celery seeds

1 Tablespoon whole cloves

Wash and slice tomatoes and onions. Sprinkle with pickling salt and let stand 3 hours. Drain and rinse. Heat the sugar and vinegar and put the spices in a cheese cloth and add them to the vinegar mixture. Heat until sugar is dissolved. Add the sliced tomatoes and onions and cook 30 minutes, until the tomatoes are translucent. Put in hot jars and process in a boiling-water canner, pints 15 minutes and quarts 20 minutes.

I also have a wonderful recipe using blueberries of course! Hope you enjoy!

BLUEBERRY POUND CAKE

1 cup of butter, softened

2cups sugar

4 eggs

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/2 cup vanilla or plain yogurt, (not in original recipe)

3 cups of flour, divided

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 pint fresh blueberries or 2 cups canned blueberries,

drained and rinsed

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time and beat until light and fluffy. Add yogurt and vanilla. Sift two cups of flour, salt and baking powder together and add it to the creamed mixture. Dredge blueberries in remaining flour and gently fold into batter. Pour batter into a buttered bundt pan coated with sugar and bake for about 1 hour and 15 minutes. Enjoy!

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

What's in my bag? Well, lots and lots of blueberries! This year we have been extremely blessed with blueberries. Gallons and gallons have been put in the freezer this year for us to enjoy smoothies, blueberry cream cheese pound cake, blueberry pancakes, blueberry chess pie, I could go on and on but I will stop.

I have also been blessed with about 20 gallons of cucumbers out of the garden this year. I am still processing pickles and sweet pickle relish. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel though.

I just brought these in from the garden today. My vines are yellow and dying so I think this is the last of the cucumbers this year.

Sunday, July 5, 2015

A friend of mine just shared with me that iHomeschool Network is having their 7th annual "Not" Back to School Blog hop starting Monday, July 6th beginning with used curriculum. I have decided to go through some of my curriculum and see if there is anything that is just sitting on my shelf collecting dust.

It's like a CYBER YARD SALE!!!

If you find something you like, email me or leave a comment and I will get back to you as soon as I can.

Here are a few sale conditions:
~Shipping via media mail to the continental U.S. and price does not include shipping. Mention in your email or comment where it will be shipped and I will find out the shipping cost.

~Paypal only

~To purchase an item, please email your requests to danawfreeman@hughes.net and I will in turn give you my paypal address. I will mail items once payment is received.